…and it’s probably not a good idea to use / 0. as your default, obviously.

The reason for having integers and floats is an historical one. Max predates Pd, where our pal Mr. Puckette had the great luxury of just starting over and never having to worry about breaking every patch in the electroacoustic repertoire.

For all the shared ancestory, assuming one will behave like the other in all ways is a recipe for misunderstanding and disaster.

As for ints: they behave *much* more the way people expect than floats once you get used to the fact that they truncate. No problems with accuracy and the last decimal place being different from what you expect or there being more decimals places that what you expect. And, ints have a much wider range than float-with-integer-accuracy.